Friday, December 26, 2008

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas. Ours was very quiet but fun. I only dozed off once, briefly, during Dr Who. Don't tell the kids.

It's Boxing Day now. I spent the morning sorting out ipods and wiis. Well, one ipod, one wii. Everyone's occupied, so I thought I would try to get some work done. Obviously, it wasn't as easy as I had hoped, which is why I am on the blog.

Place and time are crucial also to RN Morris, who brings Dostoevsky's investigating magistrate Porfiry Petrovich brilliantly to life in A Vengeful Longing (Faber), the second in the self-styled "A St Petersburg Mystery" series. Paying due acknowledgement to Dostoevsky this time round, Morris's filigree recreation plunges us into 19th-century St Petersburg and a rash of poisonings and deeply hidden motivations.

I remembered a previous article from Accone, in which I'd been criticised for not sufficiently acknowledging my debt to Dostoevsky. It seems I got the balance right this time.

Monday, December 08, 2008

Morris resurrects one of literature’s all-time greatest characters: Porfiry Petrovich, the detective from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The result reads like an episode of Columbo, but with feverish Russian psychology and the filthy overflowing canals of 1868 St. Petersburg.